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Interchain security has become an especially hot topic, and for good reason: About $2 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen in cross-chain bridge hacks just this year, according to blockchain data firm Chainalysis, which called the issue a “top security risk.”
Solving such issues, which mainly surround interoperability—the communication, or lack thereof, between blockchains—Hyperlane intends to build a platform that provides secure infrastructure that developers can use to create safer interchain applications.
That’s easier said than done, Hyperlane co-founder Jon Kol tells Fortune.
“We think, right now, there’s so much burden on the app developer to understand the nuances of the chain[s], where they can’t spend as much time on building the best app,” Kol said. “So, we want to give them tools to give the best experience for their users.”
In pursuit of this mission, Hyperlane—formerly Abacus Network—today announced that it’s raised $18.5 million in seed funding, led by early-stage crypto venture capital fund Variant. Other investors include Galaxy Ventures, Coinfund, Circle, Figment, Blockdaemon, Kraken, and NFX.
Interchain communication appears “inevitable” as the crypto ecosystem expands, according to Kol and Hyperlane’s investors, who fully acknowledge that means providing better security.
Currently, most blockchains can’t talk to each other. This means that an application on one blockchain, like Ethereum, can’t communicate with another application on, say, Solana. Cross-chain bridges allow users to move digital assets from one chain to another, commonly resulting in wrapped cryptocurrencies, among other things. However, these bridges—being the “storage point” between chains—are often targeted by hackers, as Chainalysis notes.
Bridges are vulnerable because they’re only as strong as the code behind them, Chainalysis points out. “These varying designs present novel attack vectors that may be exploited by bad actors as best practices are refined over time.”
Kol said he and his team are planning to use recent funding to build offerings like its “sovereign consensus” model, which allows developers to customize their own safety precautions for interchain applications when building them. There also are plans for more features such as an application programming interface for developers to send messages between chains, and another API to query information between chains.
At Hyperlane with Kol, who previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Galaxy Digital, are co-founders Asa Oines and Nam Chu Hoai—both with engineering experience from Celo, and Oines from Google as well—and advisers Morgan Beller, the co-creator of Diem, and Zaki Manian, the co-creator of Cosmos and Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.
As of now, Hyperlane is in “alpha mode,” currently supporting Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, Avalanche, Binance and Celo. In the fourth quarter, Hyperlane aims to transition to a “mainnet beta phase” and fully launch by the first quarter of 2023. The hope is to keep adding blockchains—and one day, allow anyone to add any new chain to the Hyperlane network.
“This might make me sound too bombastic,” Kol said, but “I think if we don’t get something like [Hyperlane], crypto is not gonna get to the size that myself and other crypto natives still believe that it could be.”
